Frequently asked questions

How often AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google AI and Perplexity name your business when people ask questions you should be the answer to, like 'which brand should I buy for…' or 'who is the best dentist near me?'.

They don't look up a ranking. They recommend the businesses they have seen described most often, by sources they trust, in the context of the question. When they search the web first, the pages they find (lists, reviews, expert sites, your own pages) shape the answer. So visibility depends on how you appear across the web, not on one page.

SEO is about ranking in a list of links. AI assistants write one answer that names a few brands or businesses, and they choose them from the sources they search or from what the model learned. Good SEO helps, but the questions, the sources and the measurement are different.

Generative engine optimization: improving how your content and business show up in AI-generated answers. It covers your own pages (content AI can quote), technical access (AI crawlers, structured data, product feeds) and presence in the sources AI trusts.

Both. If a model knows enough from its training, it answers from memory. Otherwise it searches the web, reads a few pages and answers from both, citing some of them. A business can be strong in one and weak in the other, which is why we measure both kinds of answers.

AI generates each answer fresh, so the same question can return different businesses each time. Search results, conversation history and model updates add more variation. That's why one screenshot proves nothing, and why we measure patterns across many answers and engines.

AI Overviews are the AI summaries Google shows above normal results for some searches. AI Mode is a separate conversational search tab that answers in full, runs many searches in the background and lets people ask follow-up questions. Both are built on Google Search and Gemini.

Track a fixed set of questions your customers ask across every major AI engine and analyse the answers: how often you are named (mention rate), your share of all brand mentions (share of voice), how early you are named, how often your pages are cited, and how AI describes you (sentiment and accuracy). Each metric needs a confidence range, not a single answer.

You are mentioned when AI names your business in its answer. You are cited when AI links to one of your pages as a source. You can be mentioned without being cited (AI learned about you elsewhere), and cited without being recommended. A report tracks both.

How positively or negatively AI assistants describe a business when people ask about it by name ('Is it worth it?', 'Reviews', 'Compared with…'), measured across many answers, together with the strengths and concerns they repeat and any wrong facts.

Pages that answer a question clearly: lists and comparisons ('best X for Y'), reviews, explainers and guides, expert and official sources, and pages with specific facts and numbers. Thin pages and keyword-stuffed copy rarely get used.

No, and nobody honestly can. AI answers vary and change. We show where you stand, why, and the changes most likely to raise your chances, and we can measure again to see what moved.

Engines that search the web (like ChatGPT) can reflect new pages within weeks once they're indexed and linked. Answers that come from a model's memory change more slowly, with new model versions. That's why we measure both.

Make sure AI crawlers can read your site. Find the pages AI cites for your category and get onto them: lists, reviews, directories, expert sites. Publish pages that answer your customers' questions directly, with clear facts. Say the same core things consistently across credible sources. Then measure again.

Often nothing changed on your side: a model update can shorten the list of businesses it recommends, a competitor can gain coverage, or the pages AI searched can change. Check whether competitors moved too, and whether the change is in live search or in the model's memory.

Partly. In Google Analytics, visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini show up as referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and gemini.google.com. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted as normal Google traffic, so you can't separate them. Many people also read the answer and never click, so visibility in the answers is the measure to watch.

We've seen no evidence that major AI engines use it. It's cheap to add, but it won't change whether AI recommends you. See our article on llms.txt.

Request a report with your business, website and main market. It takes a minute. You get your report by the end of the next working day, with an offer to walk you through it.